


Learning How to Breathe

by vtn



Category: Matthew Good Band
Genre: Anxiety, M/M, Questioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-28
Updated: 2007-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:51:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story told in scenes: Dave and Matt get to know each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning How to Breathe

**I.** Matt is leaning over the side of the bed, counting.

"Could you stop that?" Dave tucks the pencil behind his ear, giving up on circling things in his catalog. Time and tide wait for no man, but when coaxed, camping equipment can be convinced to.

"It's important," says Matt indignantly. "Thirty-one, thirty-two—hic—thirty-three…." He pauses, his nose twitching. "This doesn't—hic—work. Does it."

Dave takes careful aim at the target on Matt's shirt, closing one eye and squinting with the other. He points the eraser of his pencil at the bull's-eye.

"You're supposed to hold your breath and do the counting in your head."

"Oh." Matt scowls and hiccups again. "Fine."

They've got sleeping bags with a shiny finish on the outside so they absorb sunlight during the day and it keeps you warm at night. It's pretty ingenious, really, Dave thinks, if you don't mind the fact that you're sleeping in a solar cooker. He made a solar cooker once in grade school. There were hot dogs afterward. Except the solar cooker didn't really cook the hot dogs through so they ended up grilling them anyway.

Radio silence on the other side of the room.

"Matt, are you still holding your breath?" Dave looks over and checks. Matt is multitasking: ignoring him while getting a little blue in the face. "I swear, you're like a toddler sometimes, you know what I'm going to do I'm going to aim this pencil right like that so it'll hit you in the bull's-eye and…fire!" He tosses the pencil and it hits its mark.

Matt slides off the bed, taking in a huge breath.

"You moron, I was so close! I was—"

"You were so close to killing yourself. Who's the moron now?"

Folding his arms, Matt blows Dave a raspberry. He doesn't hiccup though.

 **II.** "…and I think it's a piece of shit," Matt is saying, pushing his plate of pad thai aside. "I know it's a piece of shit, in fact. This isn't some subjective opinion that's specifically not endorsed by A &M Records. This is an objective rating. This isn't like, on a scale of one to ten I rate it a piece of shit. This is like, a dog takes a crap on your bed and you look at it and you see a piece of shit and you say it's a piece of shit. Even A&M Records would look at it and tell you it's a piece of shit. Of course they won't, because it's bad publicity, but publicity isn't the point. It's a piece of shit."

"Here's a challenge," says Dave after swallowing a bite of egg roll, "What are you saying was a piece of shit, again? I want to see if you remember."

"Disney's _Pocahontas_ ," Matt says, looking unamused at best. "Historically inaccurate. No. Historically clueless. It didn't even resemble history."

"As much as I hate to argue with you, what if it wasn’t meant to be a historical movie?"

"Look, if you're gonna make a movie for kids that's about real people with real names that really lived in real life, it shouldn't plant the seeds of wildly inaccurate beliefs in them." Matt picks up his fork and plops the back end down on the table, as if he's pointing at something sitting on the table, which he isn't doing at all. "Look. If I didn't do this music thing I'd have been a history teacher. I studied this stuff for years and I see it going to waste. If I read a book of historical fiction, I'll expect it to be historical. Just because a movie is made by Disney doesn't mean I think it's okay if it teaches me that, for instance, the Boston Tea Party was an actual tea party with little porcelain cups with flowers on them."

Dave has decided that smiling and nodding is by far the best course of action here. He smiles, nods, and finishes his egg roll.

 **III.** Done recording his vocals for the day, Matt lounges around the studio. He probably has discovered about sixty-five ways to use a sofa, like some kind of sofa Kama Sutra. While he extricates his foot from between the cushions, Dave is poised over the electric piano, and as Matt frees his toes Dave starts to riff on the song Matt gave him the other day.

" _I'm bored and I'm crooked like ev-reeeee-body_ ," Matt sings along (nasally, on account of his head being on the floor).

"I wasn't aware I was in the same band as a small elephant," says Dave with a laugh and (here's what gets Matt) he keeps playing, not even missing a beat while Matt fumbles over the vocal line while trying not to giggle.

Matt gives up. "I don't deserve you," he says.

"I was dating a girl who said that to me before she broke up with me." Dave runs a hand through his hair, frowning when he presumably gets it back covered with flaking drug-store-chic gel. The other hand is still running all over "My Out of Style Is Coming Back," and Matt starts mentally doing the holy-shit-I-wrote-this-this-is-actually-something-I-wrote dance. It's the same as back when Dave first walked in and Matt told him to play something from the chorus of "Symbolistic White Walls", which Matt considers to be on all accounts a pretty crappy song. But Dave made that chord fill the room and turn the walls to water.

"So are you trying to break up with me?" Dave continues. Matt snorts.

"As if." He flushes and his hands go clammy, familiar anxiety bubbling up when he doesn't know how Dave's going to take the joke he's about to make. "More like asking you out. How about you and me, a pizza, this recording studio, and about fifteen minutes from now because I'm about to eat this sofa?" Dave shakes his head and smiles.

"It's a date. Now right yourself before I start making you sing _I just want a hula hoop_." Matt's developing inferiority complex settles at the discovery that Dave at least can't do a Chipmunks imitation worth shit.

 **IV.** The pizza is late and they screw up Matt's order. Normally Dave would be thrilled at getting two Hawaiians instead of just one, but picking the pineapple off of Matt's bits is not his idea of fun.

"There's a certain balance to how much pineapple a piece of Hawaiian pizza ought to have, see," Dave explains. "I can't just put all your pineapple on my pieces."

"Sorry," says Matt with a playful huff. "Here are your grapes, Your Majesty," he says, leaning over Dave and holding up a piece of pineapple. Dave, flirting back, cranes up and snatches it up with his teeth, licking the pieces he missed from Matt's fingers. _Thank God, finally_ , he thinks, because he's tired of the way Matt's been teasing him ever since they met. He'd kind of like to keep his mouth on Matt's fingers for even longer. It suggests to him the idea of having his mouth on other parts of Matt. This is an idea he likes. A lot.

Matt lets out a loud, nervous laugh and wipes his hand on his jeans. "I had no idea you were trained," he says and then exhales. "Seriously, what the hell was that? You licked me!"

Oops.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were hitting on me," says Dave sheepishly. He appears to have painted himself into a corner. "I mean, I thought—"

"I wasn't," says Matt sharply. "I don't do hitting on people." He looks at Dave, who quickly averts his eyes. Everything Geoff and Ian has told him suggests that an angry Matt is something to be avoided with about the same caution you'd exercise during nuclear fallout. "But," Matt continues, his tone softer, "You seem to be okay with revisionist history."

"So the licking…?" Dave tries.

"What time is it?" says Matt. Dave ignores the non-sequitur. "No, seriously, what time is it?"

Dave sighs and looks at his watch. "It's six thirty."

"I told Ian and Geoff we'd be in here till nine and I think they'll leave us alone." He starts tracing a circle in the carpet with his index finger, which is bizarrely making Dave want to start licking his hand again. "So, um, if you want to try your hand at that rewriting history thing…."

"Matt, that is a terrible pick-up line." He really wants to jerk Matt off. "And I really want to jerk you off."

Matt makes a noncommittal "Mm," and shoves the pizza boxes aside. Dave momentarily laments the loss of his Hawaiians, but forgets it when Matt leans over Dave again and carefully drapes himself over him. Dave experiences a minor sensory overload and recovers, tangling his hand in the back of Matt's hair where it's gotten scraggly. He wants Matt to grow his hair, he decides.

Matt is licking the side of Dave's neck. Matt. Is licking. The side of his neck. He's dipping his tongue in the hollow between Dave's neck and his shoulder.

"God, that's dirty," Dave whines. Who the hell _does_ that? Matt's gently biting the big vein on the side of Dave's neck. Dave's so hard it hurts, and normally he'd be grabbing Matt's hand and shoving it between his legs except he's not sure how many times Matt's done this before. So instead, with that in mind he does something he didn't think he'd ever have to do, and asks, "Matt, can I jerk you off?"

"Mf," says Matt, nuzzling into Dave's neck. He adds a muffled "Please." It's such a Matt way of saying it and Dave is kind of embarrassed by how dirty and hot he finds it. He undoes Matt's jeans and pushes them down enough to accommodate his hand.

It's obvious Matt wants this because the moment Dave gets his fingers around Matt's cock, Matt's hips are jerking into his hand and Matt is making tiny desperate noises in his throat, gasping for breath. And next thing Dave knows, Matt is curling into him again, apologizing softly for coming so quickly.

Dave reaches over and grabs another piece of pizza.

"Welcome to the fold," he says through a mouthful of pineapple and ham. "Which way's the bathroom?"

 **V.** Matt's in a corner of the studio, curled up with one of those 'alternate history' novels where the Third Reich rules the world, carefully avoiding Dave as best he can while still being in the same room. It's very interesting and he'd be paying plenty of attention if he didn't keep getting distracted by the fact that Dave's jeans are a little too short and they keep sliding up and showing his ankles whenever he leans back on his distortion pedal.

Fucking ankles. Who knew ankles could be so obscene?

"Matt," says Geoff, "Get off the floor, we need your vocals."

"This book is very, very interesting, more interesting than my vocals could possibly be?" Matt tries, hoping he's giving them his best innocent look.

"There's something else so very, very interesting, more interesting than your vocals could possibly be," Ian says with a roll of his eyes, "And if you get over it and do your job we won't ask you."

"What is this, be a dick to Matt day?" Matt pushes himself off the floor, nods at the rest of the band, and walks over to his microphone which is tucked away behind sheets of cardboard, the way he likes it.

"It's always be a dick to Matt day when we've been asking you to do something very politely for twenty minutes," he hears Geoff's voice through the cardboard.

"Play nice," says Dave. "But Matt, you can't let this get to you to the point where you can't function."

"How do you know what's getting to me?" Matt asks peevishly through the cardboard.

"I guess I don't, not really," Dave agrees, then with a remarkably absent segue, continues, "Okay, we changed the key for Middle Class Gangsters, so we need to get that one again. And Matt, I worked some more on the stuff you gave me and I think I have an idea for a chorus. We can talk later."

Matt flushes at 'worked some more on the stuff you gave me' and simultaneously gives up on figuring out how he manages interpreting everything Dave says sexually. Instead he leans gently onto the cardboard, switches on the microphone, and asks the band when they're ready for him to start.

 **VI.** "We're talking," Dave says, helpfully. "Talking. The thing where you move your mouth and words come out of it."

"Mm," Matt intonates, sounding agreeable enough.

"That means you say actual words."

"Waffle concussion pie." Smiling sweetly, Matt cocks his head to the side.

"Okay!" Dave stands up and brushes off his jeans. "If you don't want to have this conversation, I guess we don't have to. It's just—how do I explain this in simple terms…?" He sighs and sits back down on the floor. This is not going to go well, he's sure. Mental reminder from Dave to Dave: don't get involved with anyone who's in the closet. Ever.

"I want to sleep with you," says Matt.

Dave gathers himself. "That's—"

"I want to sleep with you really bad. Really badly. I know I fucked up the other day but I'm willing to start all over again." Matt licks his lips.

"You are so hot," Dave says under his breath, shaking his head.

"I always fuck things up the first time," Matt continues, shakily. "You probably got that impression by now. It's just that I worry. I worry too much, you know? I want to sleep with you—god, I need to, I want you to fuck me, I want to kiss you, I want to suck your dick—is that weird? Is that weird how much I want to suck your cock?"

"Hell no," Dave sighs. He watches Matt curl those long fingers of his around his knee.

"But I worry because I keep thinking, you know, what if we like this too much? What if we want to be together all the time? We can't start going out. I'll fuck up. I'll get scared. I'm still not ready to explain this. What if people find out and won't talk to me anymore? I keep thinking people aren't going to want to talk to me. And what if we stay together for years and we want to get married? Would you invite your mom and your dad and your sister to your gay wedding? I don't know what Chris would think—oh, hell, Chris has probably already figured out. But—what about kids? I want to have kids someday but which one of us would be the real father? Or would we adopt? And will people try and call Child Protective Services? You know, there's people that think guys who—"

"Matt. _Breathe_."

"I just—"

" _Breathe_."

Matt's eyes open wide. He leans over and falls into Dave's lap, exhaling into Dave's open mouth.

"I can do that," he murmurs and then kisses Dave again.


End file.
